Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX’s Starship is coming to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida – and its plan to use the launch facility means the Federal Aviation Administration will probe the potential environmental impact of Elon Musk’s most powerful rockets blasting off the US East Coast.

NASA’s Environmental Assessment (EA) for the whole affair was completed in September 2019. The potential environmental impact of constructing and operating the site for Starship Super Heavy vehicles was considered, and a Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI) was made.

However, that was for approximately 24 Starship Super Heavy launches per year. According to the FAA, SpaceX’s latest proposal would involve constructing the necessary infrastructure to support up to 44 launches per year.

FRIDAY, May 10, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A quick swish at the doctor’s office could someday provide early detection of stomach cancer, the fourth-leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, a new study reports.

Researcher found distinct differences in bacteria samples taken from the mouths of people with stomach cancer or pre-cancerous stomach conditions, compared with samples from healthy patients.

A simple oral rinse could pick up those bacteria as part of a quick and easy cancer screening, researchers will argue May 20 during a presentation at the Digestive Disease Week meeting in Washington, D.C.

**Breakthrough*** Clinical trial shows promising results.

Opal Sandy from Oxfordshire is the first patient treated in a global gene therapy trial, which shows ‘mind-blowing’ results.

A baby girl born deaf can hear unaided for the first time, after receiving gene therapy when she was 11 months old at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Continue reading “Baby born deaf can hear after breakthrough gene therapy” »

Scientists have unveiled three concepts for tiny spacecraft that could voyage from Earth to meet Apophis in April 2029.

Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 8 May 2024.

This led to the creation of a “bionic eye” that uses a combination of AI and several advanced scanning techniques, including optical imaging, thermal imaging, and tomography (the technique used for CT scans), to capture differences between parts of the scrolls that were blank and those that contained ink — all without having to physically unroll them.

Where’s Plato? On April 23, team leader Graziano Ranocchia announced that the group had managed to extract about 1,000 words from a scroll titled “The History of the Academy” and that the words revealed Plato’s burial place: a private part of the garden near a shrine to the Muses.

The recovered text, which accounted for about 30% of the scroll, also revealed that Plato may have been sold into slavery between 404 and 399 BC — historians previously thought this had happened later in the philosopher’s life, around 387 BC.

A custom-made drone designed by South Africa-based father-son duo Mike and Luke Bell has set a world record after flying just shy of 300 miles an hour.

The record-making attempt was performed on April 21, but according to the men behind the effort, the project has been in the works for months.

Continue reading “Custom-made drone smashes Guinness World Record with 298 mph flight” »

From the article by Robin Hanson, a professor of economics who also holds degrees in physics and computer science.

So this remains my worry: our rapid rates of change in unconditional choices of cultural norms are not mostly driven by reason, but instead by a cultural evolution process that has…

I’ve been reading, thinking, and talking, trying to get clearer on what exactly are the culture problems I’m worried about, and how best to describe them. I seek descriptions not only easy for an outsider public to understand, but also for prestigious insider specialists to embrace.

Continue reading “I Fear Maladaptive Culture” »

This spring, the Hastings Center Report added a new series of essays named after the field its pieces aim to explore. Neuroscience and Society produces open access articles and opinion pieces that address the ethical, legal, and societal issues presented by emerging neuroscience. The series will run roughly twice a year and was funded by the Dana Foundation to foster dynamic, sustained conversation among neuroscience researchers, legal and ethics scholars, policymakers, and wider publics.

The first edition of the series focuses on the topic of research studies and what is owed to people who volunteer to participate in clinical trials to develop implantable brain devices, such as deep-brain stimulators and brain-computer interfaces.

Imagine you have lived with depression for most of your life. Despite trying numerous medications and therapies, such as electroconvulsive therapy, you have not been able to manage your symptoms effectively. Your depression keeps you from maintaining a job, interacting with your friends and family, and generally prevents you from flourishing as a person.